dispatches from the new world of work

Sexy Boomers!

"Sex & the Single Boomer" is Newsweek's cover story this week. Didn't do much for me other than to reinforce one of my main themes of the last five or so years, starting to become accepted as conventional wisdom. Namely, our 80 million Boomers are the biggest market for ... everything. For instance, Boomers are the fastest growing segment of the on-line matchmaking market.

While Boomer-power is making it to the mainstream, at least in marketing consciousness, my gripe remains—re Boomers and the Women's Market—that damn few companies are "betting the farm" strategically on these two, clearly largest market segments for almost anything you can name. Or, as my pal Marti Barletta puts it, these are not "market segments," these are the market!

Tom Peters posted this on 02/15/06.

Comments

Thanks Tom - the Mick Jagger mention is of interest - he totally lost me at the Super Bowl with his white belt and ancient strip routine segway between tunes - cool to be an energetic 62 though.

Posted by Sean at February 15, 2006 10:13 AM

It's a wonderful and sad thing being a boomer. It has led us to a strange sort of group ego--we had the best popular music and there always were the most of us. We never learned to save for a rainy day . . . always figuring nothing could happen to a boomer. Boomer psychology, maybe that's why no company wants to bet on us. :)

Posted by Liz Strauss at February 16, 2006 7:05 AM

Au contraire Liz - Boomers almost 80 million strong have unprecedented weatlh and future impact - almost all companies are designing strategy to capture Boomer market share.

Posted by Sean at February 16, 2006 12:59 PM

My gut feeling is that we have to bypass the ad agencies (they don't get it), and maybe even the CMOs of companies - and go directly to the owners/CEOs to convince them to target Baby Boomers.

Even when marketing people are force-fed the facts, they put such an odd spin on them:

http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/printthread.php?t=16815

Businesses can be very strange. They either worry about the quarterly reports - or they worry about what will happen a quarter-century from now. They don't seem to care what will happen in a year, two years, five years, ten years - or they would be marketing to Baby Boomers.

Posted by Chuck Nyren at February 16, 2006 1:09 PM

Hi Sean,
Yeah we do have market share and companies who care about customers care a lot about us.

I was just responding to a comment in Tom's post and thinking of the twenty-something marketers who had us for parents and now have us for customers. :)

Posted by Liz Strauss at February 16, 2006 2:53 PM

Success with Boomers = Success with Design

Don't recreate the wheel, just make it easier to put on the car!

Posted by Tom O'Leary at February 17, 2006 10:44 AM

Apparently Boomers are now and in future years inheriting Trillions on top of the Trillions they take forward to spend on cutting edge anti aging / longevity - and 2nd homes - and hybrid vehicles - and appliances / electronics et al - thanks Liz for the clarification I missed :>}. Tom O - "make it easy" resonates with me - a bit of grace and elegance - move like an athlete.

Posted by Sean at February 17, 2006 11:32 AM